Overview

The Scaling Up Country Platforms Room aims to develop an action-oriented program that explores how country platforms can be reinforced by a systematic focus on transformational scaling, and how transformational scaling efforts can be supported by effective country platform coordination mechanisms. 

Problem

Country platforms — nationally-led coordination mechanisms designed to align public, private, and international stakeholders around shared development or climate goals — have gained significant prominence in recent years across health, education, nutrition, and climate action. At the same time, scaling development impact has become of growing concern for many international funders and country-level development actors.

Yet country platforms and scaling methodologies remain largely disconnected in practice. Country platforms often fail to achieve transformational impact at scale because they are not designed with transformational scaling as an explicit, systemic goal. Conversely, scaling efforts frequently stall because they lack the country-level coordination infrastructure that platforms can provide. Moreover, both country platforms and scaling tend to operate in transactional rather than transformational modes, missing opportunities for sustained impact at the scale of the problem.

The current crisis in development and climate finance — and the acute need to do more with less — has made this gap more consequential. A more effective, systematic approach to achieve transformational scaling of country platforms is urgently needed.

Innovation in the how

The innovation for this Room is to address the gap between country-level coordination and transformational scaling by reimagining country platforms from coordination mechanisms into transformational scaling infrastructure: nationally led mechanisms that do not merely coordinate actors around transactional, one-off projects in support of short-term results targets, but instead organize stakeholders, finance, evidence, incentives, and institutional capacity for achieving the enabling conditions (policies, institutions, political viability – localization, in essence) that are needed for a long-term pathway to sustainable impact at the scale of the development problem.

This shifts the purpose of a country platform from aligning actors around individual projects to closing the missing link between coordination and scale: what needs to grow, what systemic conditions need to change, who must sustain and expand the programs, and how progress can continue beyond any single funding cycle or initiative.

In short, the Room will explore the necessary incentives and structure for country platforms to  move from development coordination to driving transformational scaling.

Room focus

The Room will test a practical proposition by drawing primarily, but not exclusively on the experience in the health and climate areas: country platforms can become vehicles for transformational scaling if they are designed around a small set of mechanisms that convert coordination into sustained system change.

Based on the current state of the scaling and country platform literature and practice, the Scaling Community of Practice has tentatively identified the following key mechanisms that could define an effective approach to pursue transformational development and climate impact at scale with country platforms:

1. Scale pathway: Define the development or climate problem at national scale, the long-term impact goal, and the pathway from current interventions to systemic change.
2. Institutional anchoring: Identify the domestic institutions, intermediaries, or coalitions with the mandate, capacity, and legitimacy to sustain the pathway over time.
3. Inclusive structure: Involve the private sector and CSOs effectively in transformational country platforms; for the private sector this means not only unlocking of individual transactions, but importantly the shaping of markets, including capital markets, for transformational impact at scale; for CSOs, it means empowering them for active participation. 
4. Incentives, finance, and accountability: Align government, funder, private-sector, CSO and implementation incentives around long-term scale goals, not just project-level outputs.
5. Adaptive learning: Build evidence, monitoring, evaluation, and learning systems that support course correction as the scaling pathway evolves.
6. Funder alignment and handoff: Ensure external funders support nationally led scaling pathways, coordinate their instruments, and plan for responsible transition to domestic ownership.
7. Political constraints and opportunities: Account for the realities in which country platforms and scaling operate at country, regional and global level.
8. Managing tradeoffs: Recognize and transparently manage inevitable tradeoffs, including broad, integrative versus narrow, targeted scope; inclusive participation and ownership versus narrow participation of principal actors needed for implementation; focus on immediate, impactful results versus pursuit of long-term system-strengthening actions.

Questions to be addressed

1. What would it take for country platforms to become true vehicles for transformational scaling rather than coordination mechanisms for projects and funding flows? Does it require a transformational scaling approach to be taken by the main participating actors?
2. What are the main barriers preventing country platforms from achieving systemic impact at scale, and how can they be overcome?
3. How can country platforms better align political and institutional incentives, institutional capacity, financing, and stakeholder participation around long-term national transformational scaling pathways?
4. What does genuine country ownership look like in transformational country platforms, particularly in relation to external funders and private-sector actors?
5. What practical changes in platform design, governance, financing, and learning systems are needed to sustain impact beyond individual projects or funding cycles?
6. Is there any CP that is functioning along the lines discussed earlier? Is there a concrete suggestion for a sector/country where the group’s thinking could be applied?